Betray or Be Tortured
by DwaejiTokki
Summary: Merlin is subjected to cruel torture, both mental and physical, when he refuses to betray his king. Will his vow to die before becoming traitor be acted upon, or does even Emrys have a limit to his endurance? Explicit content. Please read warning inside.


Betray or Be Tortured

 **Summary** : Merlin is subjected to cruel torture, both mental and physical, when he refuses to betray his king. Will his vow to die before becoming traitor be acted upon, or does even Emrys have a limit to his endurance? Explicit content. Please read warning inside.

 **Rating** : T, for torture, humiliation, and despair, as well as explicit descriptions of said torture, humiliation, and despair.

 **Disclaimer** : Inspired in part by Edgar Allan Poe's _The Pit and the Pendulum_. I own neither that nor _Merlin_.

Merlin's stomach dropped upon the declaration, but he made a valiant effort to keep the dread from his face. Beyond his sentence he heard nothing, for his ears became full of a roaring noise like a great waterfall. But his other senses became quite acute: he could very clearly feel the cold manacles round his wrists that weighted down his arms, which caused a burning in his shoulders; he could smell the acridity of the six white candles on the table before him, which lighted the vaulted room; he could still taste the coppery blood on his lip from the punch that had been delivered when he'd struggled; and everything, despite the dimness, was in sharp contrast and surrealistically hued. Worst of all, Merlin could see the lord before him forming his name on his pale lips, describing to him what could be expected—but Merlin heard none of it.

The two guards behind him, once the sentence had been pronounced and the orders given, lifted Merlin from his knees by a strong grasp on either arm. Merlin automatically stood and followed as he was led away like a cow to slaughter, but once the doors had been shut and they beyond them, he let himself go limp even as a bag was pulled over his head. The guards were unsympathetic and proceeded to drag their prisoner along the dark corridors, for he had been brought to the castle in the dead of night, and took him down to the deep, damp dungeons below.

He was deposited in a cell, and the heavy iron fetters connected to a length of chain that was bolted to the floor. The bag was removed, and Merlin was left alone in the windowless room, plunged into the pitch dark.

Now Merlin's vehement promise that he would die before betraying his king seemed quite foolish.

He suddenly felt very sick in both his heart and his belly. He didn't know where he was, or whether the patrol he had been with had been captured as well, or whether the knights and his king were all right, or whether the bandits had killed them all. But if the knights and king were anything but alive and well, it hardly made sense that the lord to whom Merlin had been brought would have any reason to question him and entice him to freely give information regarding the inner workings of the kingdom of Camelot.

Merlin had refused the lord's promises: wealth beyond his imagination, any woman he desired, a sizeable plot of land near the border where he could live in peace with the aforementioned gifts, and so on. It was before the lord could offer anything else that Merlin vowed his death before becoming a traitor. Thereafter the noble thought for a moment, and then declared that Merlin would be tortured until information was forthcoming.

The young warlock had always fancied himself very brave, especially when it came to Arthur, but now that he was separated from his magic by the iron manacles, and he was very alone in the dark and didn't know where he was, he was terribly afraid. Merlin wanted nothing more than to wake up from this nightmare, preferably to see old Gaius standing over him with a candle, having just woken him to comfort him.

But it seemed quite unlikely that such a thing would happen. Merlin would have to find his own way out.

He opened his eyes and looked all about, but for all he could see he might have left his eyes firmly shut. There was nothing but blackness. The warlock would have to look with his hands.

Merlin groped about. The floor was damp and hard: moldy stone. He wouldn't be likely to find anything useful; though he might find something very disgusting, if the cloying smell that permeated the room was any indication.

He staggered to his bare feet (his shoes had been taken away by the bandits when he'd been captured), and tried to explore as best he could, trembling convulsively. Outstretched hands met smooth, slimy, cold masonry. He followed it, finding it to be perfectly uniform, except for an empty alcove where he expected the door was, for he could not reach it, as the length of his chain prevented him from going any farther. Merlin found that in that way he could not ascertain the dimensions of the room; he could have made a complete circuit and not realized it.

After a moment of contemplation, he ripped a sizeable rag from the hem of his shirt and laid it perpendicular to the wall. He might have used his scarf, but he'd lost it sometime during the ambush that had startled the patrol and resulted in his kidnapping. Then he began another circuit round the room. After only a few steps, he slipped on a patch of wet, squishy mold as thick as moss, and crashed to the floor. He lay stunned for a moment, and found that he could not bring himself to get up again. Merlin succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

Upon awakening, he stretched his arm out and found a loaf of hard bread and a pitcher of water. Too exhausted to think about it, he ate and drank it, then resumed his tour round his dark prison. The warlock at length came to the rag, having counted fifty-two paces. Allowing two yards for each pace, he calculated, the room was about twenty-six yards in circumference. But that did not account for all the angles he had encountered, so Merlin couldn't begin to guess what shape the vault was.

Intent on keeping himself distracted, Merlin started to measure the middle of the floor. But he had hardly made it twelve steps when he slipped again and fell violently on his face. It was lucky that his breath whooshed out of him, because as it did he heard it echo faintly beneath him—which could not have been possible, if there were merely a floor under his head. He seemed to be at the edge of a pit, whose lips he could trace with his hands, but not tell the extent of it.

Groping about the masonry just below the opening, he succeeded in dislodging a piece of stone, which he dropped into the abyss. For many seconds he listened to it dashing against the sides of the hold, and it eventually plopped into a pool far below: it echoed back up to him lazily.

Merlin scrambled backwards, very unsettled, to the wall where it was safe. Every limb shook. It had been a terribly close call. He might have fallen to his death had it not been for that accident—had that been the lord's intention all the while? The agitation of the discovery kept him awake for a long time, but at last he could not help but to fall asleep once more.

Soon thereafter he woke again. Reaching out, he found another loaf and a pitcher of water. Merlin did not question it, and, being parched, he took a long draught of the water. It must have been drugged, for he almost at once became irresistibly drowsy, and he slumped over dead asleep.

There was light when next he opened his eyes.

He saw that his measurements of the room had been early correct, give or take a few feet. The angles he had felt while exploring were simply small niches or slight depressions in the wall, and the shape of the room was generally square. What he had thought to be moldy stone was in fact iron plates melded together at odd intervals—and that was why he was so thoroughly blocked off from his illegal magic! In the center of the stone floor yawned the circular pit from who jaws he had narrowly escaped.

All this he saw indistinctly and with much effort because his condition had been greatly changed during his slumber. He lay upon his back, spread-eagled on a low slab of wood. Only his head could move, for the rest of him was strapped down.

He was terribly thirsty.

Looking upward, he was horrified to see a cloaked figure standing on the ceiling like some demented spider—but then he realized that it was not a real person, but a painted wooden one in the visage of Death. Rather than holding a scythe as he saw in one of Gaius' books, it held a very large, very sharp ax. As he watched, the ax began to swing back and forth ever so slightly, like the pendulum in a great clock. If Merlin had not known magic was involved in such an intricate machine, he would have been very confounded indeed. But all he could feel was fear—gut-wrenching, icy cold fear—as the ax suddenly dropped several inches with a loud, resounding _clank_! and picked up speed in its swinging.

Inch by inch by inch by inch the ax came down, swinging all the while in wider arcs.

At last he came to his senses and struggled against his bonds, but he was stuck fast. He could then feel the vibrations of the pendulum each time it passed. It was a mere three feet from his bosom. His heart shuddered frantically; he writhed with all his strength.

But it was no use. He was going to die.

The ax sliced through the thin material of his shirt, then came sweeping back. He felt the sting as his skin was cut. Merlin slammed his eyes shut, gasping, trembling, preparing for death.

Another sharp sting—but across his back.

Shocked, his eyes shot open. He found that he was pressed face-first against the slimy wall, his wrists shackled above him. Mind reeling with the last dizzying vestiges of panic and confusion, he could feel and dimly see that he was shirtless. Was this death?

A whistle, a crack—and lancing pain.

Merlin let out an involuntary cry. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a shadowy figure raising its arm. He was being whipped.

Not dead.

The beating continued, lash after lash after lash after lash, until Merlin was a sobbing, quivering, groveling mess. Each strike was a new lesson in torture. Once it seemed that many days had passed, the masked torturer let him down and left the cell after reconnecting Merlin's chain to the bolt at the center. All was plunged into darkness again.

He hadn't been asked any questions, he realized belated. They were waiting for him to wear down until he was begging to give them information about his king.

Merlin curled up against the wall, pressing his feverish brow against the cold, damp metal, and fell into a fitful sleep. His last cognitive thought was an explicit wish for some water for his raw throat and a tonic for the agony of his shredded back.

A flare of light woke him.

The young warlock turned to the door, stiffly, painfully, feeling every scab in his back tearing with the slightest movement. The light did not come from that direction.

His blood suddenly ran cold.

Merlin turned again, this time toward the center of the room.

The light came from the pit. The red glow quickly turned a flickering orange, brighter and brighter as the flames licked upward, like Hell was boiling over. Merlin saw at once that the bolt holding his chain was somewhere deep within the pit. It would be all too easy for some demon to grasp his tether and pull him into the bowels of the earth.

The fire let loose a vicious roar, and a clawed hand lunged forth—the humungous hand of the Devil.

Terror seized Merlin as the black claws sank into the stone flooring, ripping out great chunks. The fire was so hot that the stone was becoming liquid, which began to flow toward him even as the Devil grumbled and heaved his great weight upward.

He scrambled away, bumping into the wooden slab upon which he had been tied earlier. The molten fire inched steadily toward him. Merlin clambered on top of the table, which had been pushed against the wall.

Merlin's chain, unaffected by the fire, was too short to allow him to climb entirely onto it—he had to lay awkwardly with his torso hanging over the edge, one foot wedged between the side of the table and the wall, his head reared back to keep his precarious balance. Though the fire would not be able to reach him, it would light the wood of the table and get him that way—if the demon didn't get him first. Another hand joined the first, and glowing yellow eyes appeared above the lip of the overflowing pit.

Merlin wept and trembled as the Devil, with an awful leer, reached toward him. But he didn't dare call out to God, or even invoke the name of the Mother.

The searing hand grasped his leg.

He writhed and screamed instinctively, but that was a fatal mistake. Though he managed to fend off the hand, the table tottered, then toppled forward, and Merlin fell into the pitching flames. But he didn't burn.

There was no fire, only the slimy floor, just as it had been. The demon had gone. He was safe. Alive.

The table had landed on his legs, which were twisted uncomfortably, but Merlin was in such shock that he could do nothing but lie there, heaving and gasping. He tasted bile. The agony of his lashes returned in full force, almost as though the torturer were back at it again. His feet grew numb, the blood flow blocked off by the crushing weight of the table.

It was a long while before he had gotten himself under control. He moved very slowly, trying not to exacerbate his wounds and the pain they caused, and extricated himself from beneath the slab. His fingertips brushed a hole in the fabric of his breeches, just below the knee. When he investigated he felt the all too familiar searing pain of a burn. Despite this, he sucked in a breath and explored its dimensions in the darkness. It seemed to him that he had been burned with a poker, not grabbed by a fiery hand of Hell.

Though he knew it was selfish of him, Merlin wished for nothing more than Arthur—Arthur, in his shining armor (but not too shiny, for Merlin hadn't been there to polish it for quite some time), followed by his ever faithful Roundtable Knights, to burst into the dungeon and take him away, to take him to Gaius and to Gwen for some much-needed bandages and comfort. And perhaps a blanket or two would be nice, for now that the fire was gone (or never was) he found himself very cold.

He began to cry miserably, and tried to keep himself awake because it seemed every time he woke up he found himself in another nightmare. But try as he might, he could not resist, and he fell asleep again. When he woke, he stretched out his arm carefully to avoid pulling his back muscles, and as he expected found more bread and water. Merlin distrusted it. Despite his biting hunger and desperate thirst, he pushed them into the pit and listened to them fall forever.

He instantly regretted it.

Someone called his name.

Merlin perked up, albeit weakly, and listened intently. Pounding footsteps approached, and the voice called him again, clear as a bell—Arthur.

Elated, Merlin tried to call out to him, but he could only croak. Nonetheless, the door was thrust open, and there, in all his golden glory, stood Arthur. "Merlin, what on earth are you lazing about for? Come on!"

Merlin pushed himself up onto his elbows, ignoring the pain. He tried to go to Arthur, only to be stopped short by the chain. The king shook his head. "Merlin, you idiot," he said, then shut the door—and locked it.

For a moment, Merlin was stunned and could not move. Then he began to yank on his chain, croaking for Arthur to come back, begging him to help him. But Arthur did not, and though Merlin knew that Arthur never would have done that and that this Arthur was not real, he felt betrayed and wretched and, above all, abandoned.

A particularly harsh yank resulted in a crack from his wrist, and he fell over in agony, face pinched. Then he began to sob and scream in a broken voice, and stretched himself out as far as he could toward the door—his hands above his head and his feet point toward, which was absolute agony for his wrist and back—and kicked and beat the door as though it might give and he escape.

Nothing happened but that Merlin was left feeling worse than ever before.

He thought about giving them just a tiny tidbit of information, just enough that they'd let him out of this wretched prison, but then immediately discounted the idea, feeling incredibly guilty. The niggling little thought kept returning, telling him that he was not a knight, and that no one could or would blame him for giving in, that it was just a _tiny_ piece of trivial information that it would not matter, that he would be forgiven for it. Merlin shook it off when it came, but each time it was harder.

At last came the moment he seriously considered it, and debated what it was that he could tell the lord without causing Arthur's downfall, or even really betraying his king. Perhaps he might be able to tell a lie that would reveal the lord's intentions, and the knights would be dispatched to apprehend him, and Merlin, as consequence, would be discovered and freed! But what to tell, what to tell?

He could hardly think—he was so hungry, so thirsty, in such pain from his beatings and from his own writhing about.

There was nothing to do but to talk of the guards' shift-change schedule. That would be something in which they were interested, and Merlin could lie about it in exchange for water. Surely that would be enough for them. He was so very thirsty. But when he opened his mouth to call for someone to give him audience with the lord, he found that he could not speak. His voice was gone, destroyed by his last tantrum.

Merlin despaired.

In the midst of this melancholy, his stomach began to cramp horribly. For a long moment he mistook it for hunger pangs, until he realized that it came from lower. There was no longer any avoiding it.

He contemplated using the pit, for there was no chamber pot, but he shuddered at the thought that all it took was one moment of clumsiness to send him tumbling into the abyss. No, it was too horrible to risk.

Merlin shuffled to the nearest corner, and, praying his torturer didn't decide to come, dropped his trousers as best he could with his hands bound. His back stretched agonizingly as he squatted, using the damp wall for support. There was no one to see him, no way anyone could in such utter darkness, but he felt humiliated all the same.

Once finished, he crawled away from the mess, feeling nauseated and empty.

No one would come for him. The thought echoed through his exhausted mind, weighing him down as though it were a physical presence. Despite the hopelessness of that statement, it comforted him enough that he could close his eyes and sleep.

This time more than one voice was calling his name. There was a heavy crashing din, and some shouting, but that was quickly shut up. A commanding voice reverberated through the door, and a key was fitted clumsily into the lock.

Merlin ignored it. He'd learnt his lesson last time.

Light flooded his cell as the door swung open, revealing the gaping hole in the center of the room, and the upturned table to one side. Merlin lay curled in a semi-fetal position, his striped back facing the door. He stared at his fingers in front of his face, one hand at an awkward angle. He hardly recognized them as his own, they were so filthy from his blind groping.

The voices, louder now, continued calling his name, but Merlin paid them no heed even as shadows flitted across his peripheral vision. He would not be fooled by wild fantasies. He was not mad.

A hot hand touched his shoulder, shook him a little, then moved to his face and swept back a few stray locks of hair. Merlin ignored it still—he had imagined heat and touch before. The hand pushed up one of his half-lidded eyes, which irritated him because his eyes were too dry and the light was too bright. He let out an agitated rasp, twitching his head to fend off the hallucination.

The hand went away. Merlin expected the shadows and the light to go away, too, but they remained. He suddenly recognized the low, discordant buzzing in his eyes to be the sound of low voices, echoing and mixing together indistinctly.

He imagined more touches, very gentle, and he let his eyes close before the faces before him came clearer. He thought he knew them, but he didn't dare let his hopes get up. This was no rescue. If the figures were real, then they were bringing him before the lord to betray Arthur. They continued to whisper and touch him as the manacles were removed. The felt a surge of familiar jolt through him then, but he was far too tired to pursue it.

Something very warm and soft and clean enveloped him. He took a shuddery breath as he smelled fresh air on it—a summery odor. It ignited a forbidden sliver of hope in him. Strong arms lifted him, cradled him. He suddenly felt safe and secure, and even more so as they turned and moved into the light.

No more dark.

No more pit.

No more torture.

As they moved out of the prison, Merlin's ears began to work again, and he could hear clearly. The voices were all familiar to him—even the footsteps were ones he recognized. It was King Arthur and his Roundtable Knights, come to save him.

They carried him up and up and up, and everything became too bright for him, but he dared not complain. After a long walk, surrounded by imperious voices and smatterings of "Yes, Sire," Merlin was at last deposited on something soft—oh, so soft. He was propped up, something pressed against his lips, and he tasted sweet, sweet water.

It was taken away too soon, but it had revived him enough that he tried to follow it, eyes cracking open to search for this Holy Grail.

Even as Lancelot—for it was Lancelot—told him not too much at once, he brought the cup back and let the warlock drink more. Merlin weakly tried to raise an arm to block out the light, but it was no use. Gwaine ripped a bit of the soft cloak they had used to blanket him and wrapped it gently around his eyes, after he'd mopped away the grit and dirt with a warm wet cloth. Merlin could still see a bit through the material, mostly vague shadows, but the light no longer pained him, and he silently allowed himself to be tended to, for he recognized then the smell of an apothecary. It was not Gaius', though. Merlin knew that well enough.

Once the ministrations were finished, Merlin was fed some broth and water, then a tonic for the pain. He was allowed to sleep for as long as he wanted, for Merlin was not in the mood to talk or be talked to, due to the pain and exhaustion after his ordeal, but he was agreeable to the mention of returning home, and in fact insisted upon it. Arthur ordered up the best carriage to be furnished with soft bedding and blankets so that Merlin could rest in comfort on the way back while the others rode the horses, and they left the following morning. Leon was left behind to handle the estate until such time another lord could be appointed.

They stopped for the night and laid out a bedroll by the fire for Merlin, and redressed his wounds and fed him more broth.

In the middle of the night, Merlin woke. Everything was dark except for the fire, and for a moment he feared that he was having another hallucination, and that he was still trapped in that cell after all. He nearly panicked, but then he remembered that there was a way to find out whether he was or not: it was to touch the fire to see if it were real.

He stretched out his hand, fingers trembling for fear. But before he could reach it, a hand intercepted his and held it. Merlin stared at it. The hand was rough and hot against his, and there was an awfully familiar ring reflecting the dancing firelight, which he stared at, mesmerized. His other hand—the one wrapped in a tight cast, for the wrist was broken—reached out and felt the cool stone of the jewel. The hand allowed him to investigate for a moment, then made him to put his arms back under the blankets, and Merlin understood that he was supposed to sleep.

He watched under the fringe of his lashes as the figure returned to his vigil.

It was Arthur.

Merlin knew then without a doubt that he was safe and protected, and went at once to sleep.

END

 **A/N:** Sorry for any mistakes; I cracked this out in two hours and posted it. Thanks for reading!


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